Business in Turkey

Is there any light under the tunnel? When it comes to entrepreneurship, Turkey is far from being a global star. We blame the education system, government policies or unfriendly business environment for not starting our own business. All these play important roles in encouraging entrepreneurs not to take action but we cannot change these factors all at once. We need to adopt to the entrepreneur friendly world by making small adjustments and increasing small business production nationwide.

When I was studying at college, I always imagined a work that made me happy. I wanted to do something where I could make a difference. It never mattered what sector, company or profession I’d be in, but I knew I wanted to solve people’s problems, perform better and better, and learn new things everyday. In fact, if I had to describe the feeling I wanted to have about work, it was simply ‘to wake up happy and motivated.’ It might seem a bit idealistic or even too optimistic for most who just work to earn a living, make a profit and support their families, but the positive work image in my head helped me adjust rapidly to new work environments, have good relationship with colleagues and enjoy accomplishments of the team.

Whatever business we’re in, we have busy schedules. Sometimes we don’t even have much time to read a book, practice sports or even to enjoy lunch with friends. We need to rush from one engagement to another, complete tasks within deadlines and most importantly make no mistakes. If we make mistakes, it would take at least the double time and effort to get everything straightened and worst of all is the feeling of guilt and devastation after committing the mistake. Why?

Have you heard of the new TV show ‘BirFİKRİNmiVAR? (Do you have an idea?) It is a weekly program airing on NTV that features entrepreneurs’ start-up ideas. There are trailers of each week’s contestants who vividly demonstrate their first prototypes in front of the jury, who in return challenges them with thought provoking questions. Jury members are Ali Sabancı, Chairman of Pegasus Airlines; Gulden Yılmaz, Co-Chair of Koton Textile and Ömer Kızıl, Deputy Managing Director for Sales and Marketing at Uludağ Beverage.

Where is the largest library in the world? Most of you would think that the greatest one is the Library of Congress in Washington DC, USA. It has indeed the largest collection in print with 30 million books from numerous different languages and categories. National Library of China stores 22 million books, Library of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Beijing collects more than 20 million books today. These are the largest physical libraries that store printed books. In the age of digital revolution, when we think of the largest libraries we need to take into account digital ones.

Social media has been redefining the way we communicate with each other. Beyond creating simple dialogues, it became the broadcasting tool for the average person to spread news, promote brands and share real-time events. It has the power of reaching millions of people regardless of distance and immediately receiving feedback. Last week as I was writing this article, the horrible 9.0 magnitude quake and disastrous tsunami hit northeast Japan. CNN and BBC were showing the same images of the first gigantic waves that wiped out entire villages with houses, cars and farmlands.

As I was growing up, I was told I had special talent for art. So, my Mom took me to private classes in painting and admired the colorful paintings I would bring back home. For me, painting was a fun journey to my imaginary world where I was free to walk through things that interested me and draw them onto the paper. Well, my enthusiasm for art remained vivid as a hobby, but as a realist I never even dared to imagine myself as an artist. I studied international relations with a focus in business and always aimed at becoming a part of the business world. However, I always asked myself how to build a business model where art could be successfully implemented.

How do you like reading your daily newspaper? Are you a classical reader who prefers having the feel of the actual paper and turning its pages despite newspaper ink on your hands? Or have you already become a digital reader with an online subscription?I am experiencing a big dilemma these days. On one hand, I am an old-fashioned newspaper reader, who enjoys flipping the physical pages of the paper. Yet, I am always excited by new experiences that the digital world has to offer in terms of journalism.My new excitement is reading the Daily on my iPad. It only took me a few days to fall in love with this new digital paper, which offers much more than online versions of a newspaper.